


Octo-Heist in Space

by Isis



Category: Octo-Heist in Progress - Rich Larson
Genre: Action/Adventure, Biotechnology, Gen, Handwaving, IN SPACE!, Octopi & Squid, Science Fiction, Space Pirates, Space Stations, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21671740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: TheMuneta Starlane'sregular shuttle run turns out to be anythingbutregular.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Octo-Heist in Space

**Author's Note:**

  * For [psocoptera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/gifts).



Dean frowned at the large tanks that took up most of the hold. “ _Starlane_ , do we have loading snaps of our cargo?” 

_Four tanks of CoolChroma™ eggs, two tanks of MacroTurtle™ eggs. Specify?_ appeared on his lenses. 

“Tank, uh, three,” he said, checking the label on the tank that had caught his eye. A transparent image appeared on his lenses, and he moved his head and blinked to adjust the display so that it overlay the actual tank in front of him. Now each gelatinous fish egg had a pale ghostly echo in front of it. Except there were definitely more ghosts than eggs. And that was a problem.

Unclipping the handlight from his utility strap, he peered into the greenish water. Tank 3 looked pretty much the same as the tanks to either side, modulo the missing eggs. A steady stream of bubbles issued from the pipes surrounding the circulator pump at the tank’s far end, aerating the seawater and making the soft eggsacs ripple in the gentle current. Shanae had just executed the _Muneta Starlane’s_ midpoint deceleration burn, and so Dean was in the cargo hold to ensure that the rotating frames kept the tanks properly oriented to virtual down during the grav shift, which they had done perfectly. Then he’d done a quick visual, which they always did at the midpoint of each shuttle run, just in case the rotation had swept a bit of eggsac or the gravel at the bottom of the tank into the pump intake, but Dean had never seen that happen in the four years he’d worked shuttle for Muneta Biolabs. Then again, he’d never seen eggs go missing, either.

He looked over the neat rows of marble-sized fish eggs. When they hatched, they’d be baby CoolChroma™, the giant color-changing damselfish that had been an aquarium hit ever since Muneta had released the first version a little over a year ago, but now they all looked the same, a milky translucent white. Now that he was up close, he could see that not only was a full layer of eggs missing, the back rows of the top layer were also gone.

“Marika, did you open any of the tanks?”

 _Negative_ , came the message on his lenses almost immediately. _What’s up?_

He snapped the overlay and blinked it over the shipnet, and by the time he’d checked each of the other tanks, just in case, she was coming through the doorway. (Which wasn’t an indication of her speed; the shuttle was pretty small.)

“Monitors didn’t show any discreps or breaches,” she said as she came in. Marika was a biotech researcher heading to the station for her two-month shift. The biospecialist coming back on the return trip would have more work to do, monitoring the sale-ready mature bioclones, but Marika was one of the more conscientious biologists working for Muneta, and every time she’d been on Dean’s shuttle she had kept an eye on things, whether coming or going. “How are the others?”

“Just that one.” He pointed at Tank 3 with his handlight.

She unclipped her own handlight and examined the layers of eggs, then swept the beam across the pipes and hardware of the circulator. “Oho. Looks like we’ve got a stowaway.”

“Wait, there was nothing,” started Dean, and then he shut it, because in the steady beam of Marika’s light, the circulator pump was slowly unfolding itself, one tentacle at a time unwrapping from the mass of pipes and shifting color from the dull gray of the plasteel to a mottled orange.

“Busted,” said Marika happily.

Dean eyed the octopus, which was floating above the eggs and not looking particularly upset to have been discovered. Not that he had any idea what an upset octopus looked like. “Want I should space it?”

As soon as he said the words, the octopus jetted to the back of the tank, its limbs flailing. _So_ that’s _what an upset octopus looks like._

“Almost looks like it understands us,” he said.

“Maybe,” said Marika. “You know, Muneta was working on an augmented octo for remote undersea work. They’re really smart to begin with. Not to hard to make them extra extra.”

“Before my time.” In the tank, the octopus hovered next to the circulator pump. He could swear it was paying attention to their convo.

“Not my project, either. But I heard that when they had the shark spill, some of the prototypes went missing.”

“Think they got loose, too?” He shuddered. The shark spill had been mega bad press, but it was what had got him this job. In the aftermath, legislation had been passed requiring bioengineering labs to grow their creations in sealed facilities. With the safeguards required for Earth-based labs, it became more cost-effective for corps like Muneta to move offplanet. They had already been building a low-grav research habitat at L4, and this only accelerated their work. But since no biotech researcher worth his or her PhD was willing to actually live full-time on the small, remote station, it was mostly used for growing product to maturity, with a handful of biologists and techs on duty rotation to keep the machinery running.

“Give me a moment,” Marika told him. “Open the access port. Don’t space him.” 

“Him?” said Dean, but Marika was already heading out of the cargo hold. He unclipped the socket wrench from the brackets that held it next to the doorway, and went back over to the tank to undo the access port. The wrench was heavy, oversized compared to the small amount of torque actually needed, but as a security precaution all the bolts on the tank were specially made to work only with this particular tool.

She returned a few minutes later with a piece of equipment Dean hadn’t seen before. A thicket of plasteel levers sprouted from a central ball, each with a different symbol in raised type on the end. A thick rubber tube connected the ball to a couple of static clips.

Marika used the clips to secure the tube to the side of the tank, then dropped the ball through the small hatch Dean had opened into the water, where it hung like a mutant sea urchin. “One of the projects I was planning to work on during my downtime. Give it a whirl.”

“What do I do?” asked Dean.

“Not you.” She turned back to the tank. “Come on, buddy.”

The octopus swam toward the device and delicately extended an arm toward one of the levers. When the tip touched the symbol on the end, a soft staccato voice came from the end of the tube: **fufufuf** **u**

Dean glanced at Marika, who was subvocalizing into her memo, then back to the octopus. It retracted its tentacle, then unfurled it again to tap another lever.

**nanananana**

The tentacle lifted, poised in the water above the lever, and another tentacle snaked out to another lever: **oooooooo**

And then the first tentacle came back, and the sounds mingled: **noonoonoonoo**

It was a voice sim, Dean realized, and the octopus must have realized it too, because there was a sudden flurry of movement in the tank, and an explosion of noise from the device:

**NoofoosiSItatateetutonamapaPAlulacucucocoCOpapiPICOPICOPICOPICO**

“Looks like he’s getting the hang of it,” said Marika. The octopus had drawn back and was repeatedly hammering on a set of levers: **PICO PICO PICO PICO**

“Pico,” said Dean experimentally, and the octopus stopped pushing the levers and held up two tentacles, tips curving to point back at its head. “Huh, guess that’s its name.”

“So, Pico,” said Marika. “Can’t have you eating our cargo.”

The octopus – Pico – rippled its tentacles across the levers, resulting in a cacophony of sound as it searched for the right keys. Then: **shrimpy shrimpy shrimpy**

“ _Starlane_ , do we have shrimp?” She leaned forward. “You’re in luck. We’ll forgo our scheduled scampi if you stay away from the fish eggs. Dean, can you defrost three shrimp and bring them here, please?”

A map of the food storage lockers blinked onto Dean’s lenses, and he nodded. “Be right back.”

 **foor**

“No, three,” said Marika firmly, as Dean left the hold.

* * *

Next cycle, Dean was feeding clothes through the spin cleaner when a message from Marika flashed across his lenses: _I’m with Pico, can you come help?_ He sent back an ack, finished the load, and headed down to the cargo hold.

Marika was in front of Pico’s tank, an open carrycase on the floor in front of her. The voice sim still hung through the tank’s access port. She waved him over. “I want to take a look at his wetsuit.”

“He’s got a wetsuit?” Dean had thought that at this point, nothing could surprise him – they had a _talking octopus_ in their cargo hold – but he had been wrong. Apparently they had a _talking octopus wearing a wetsuit_ in their cargo hold.

 **maxy sexy flexy swelly wetsuit** , said Pico.

“Maxy...what?”

“It’s the way teens talk these days,” said Marika. “My sister’s kid is all maxy this and swelly that.”

“Teens, huh. So he was some kid’s pet?”

**nononono work job in houses take shiny for terryman**

“He used the wetsuit to run around and steal things for a handler,” Marika translated. “So he could spend more time out of the water and not get deoxygenated. Open the tank, would you, and pull him out?”

Dean went back to the door and started to take the socket wrench out of its brackets, but then Marika said, “Oh, never mind,” and he turned around to see that Pico had wrapped his many arms around the voice sim’s tube and was squirming up and through the small space between the tube and the edges of the access port. He wouldn’t have thought it possible if he hadn’t seen it himself. That octopus was at least a meter long, counting the tentacles, and maybe a quarter of that wide. No way could it squish down like that, except it had. _He_ had. 

“Great,” said Marika, as if she was totally okay with Pico getting out on his own. “Now, can you hold him up so I can look at his suit from all angles?”

Dean reached out with some trepidation, and Pico squirmed into his hands. The octopus was cool and wet and squishy, and surprisingly heavy. As he lifted it for Marika’s inspection, a message from Shanae came across his lenses: _Be ready for evasive maneuvers – other vessel on collision course._ He glanced over and Marika nodded at him; of course she’d gotten the alert as well. “Just hang on to him if we shift around,” she advised him.

“I don’t get paid enough for this.”

“None of us do. Let’s see, permex wrap with microtrodes, don’t need more trodes, though, am I right, buddy? Two by three section on arm three. Entirety of arm four. Looks like you were cammed, too? Ooh, big section missing here on the mantle, let’s see, maybe eight centi – oof!”

The _Starlane_ lurched and fell off to the right, or at least, that was what it felt like. Dean grabbed onto the edge of the tank with one hand, and to avoid dropping the octopus he pressed it to his chest, which, ugh. And he’d just done the wash, too.

_Sorry! Good now._

“All right, let me see his mantle again,” said Marika. “Eight centimeters by three here, plus a few small tears around the back. Two by four on arm six. I should have enough permex to make repairs.”

“Can’t you just take it off? Why does he need a wetsuit?”

She shrugged and began to rummage through her carrycase. “He asked.”

“You,” said Dean, “are a soft touch.” 

Pico, still in his hands, lifted a tentacle, or arm, or whatever it was, and gently booped him on the nose. Marika laughed. “Different kind of soft touch! Hang on, I just need to cut a few pieces and mix the glue.”

 _Uh-oh, guys. They’ve swung around and are coming back._

Dean exchanged a glance with Marika. “The other ship?”

_Affirm. Crap. Hang on._

Dean grabbed the edge of the tank again just in time. The _Starlane’s_ apparent grav increased, then bent to the side. A dull thud sounded from somewhere, and the floor slipped upward as Dean fell hard on his hip. Pico slipped from his grasp. The lights flickered.

_Come here now. Pirates._

No sooner had he absorbed the message than the grav cut out entirely. “Get him back in the tank,” Marika barked, and Dean found the octopus, which had suctioned itself to an outer edge of the tank, and scooped him up and deposited him back through the port. Marika scrambled to get the cutter and glue bottles back in her carrycase, leaving the thin, transparent sheets of permex to drift in the space of the hold. “Pirates. Oh, hell. Well, come on,” she said, pushing herself through the door.

* * *

As they reached the bridge the _Starlane_ returned to a light decel, just enough to restore sufficient grav to give them their down again. Shanae called out over her shoulder, “We’re being hijacked, apparently. Spacejacked. Whatever.”

“Did you burst Muneta?” asked Marika.

“They said go along. Our lives are more important, etcetera etcetera.”

Marika snorted. “That’s a first from them.”

“ _Definitely_ not paid enough for this,” said Dean.

There was a light thump on the rear of the shuttle, where the airlock was. “Okay,” said Shanae. “You’d better go to let our guests in. Both of you.”

As Dean and Marika moved toward the airlock, Dean’s lenses scrolled through the messages Shanae had forwarded them. The pirates were in a small podship, though it must have been retrofitted with a cannon, because the earlier thump had been a liquid shot at their hull – enough to put them on notice, not enough to damage anything. The pirates knew exactly who owned the shuttle and approximately what they were hauling. They promised to let the crew go in the podship if they didn’t do anything stupid.

“What counts as stupid?” muttered Marika. She must have directed her words to the shipnet, because Shanae’s answer came across their lenses: _Just don’t get us killed, okay?_ “I don’t suppose you have a gun, or something?” That was directed at Dean, who shook his head. “Oh, hell,” she said, with feeling, as they started moving toward the airlock.

The _Muneta Starlane_ was a pretty basic shuttle, adequate for its task but not much more than that. The corridor to the airlock ran straight back along the centerline from the bridge to the shuttle’s stern, past the small crew cabins, two on each side. The whole back of the top level was their galley and food storage; the airlock door was on the left, the ladder down to the cargo hold and mechanical room on the right. 

The airlock was in the process of cycling through. When the inner door opened, two men stood there in light vac suits holding flashguns. As soon as they saw Dean and Marika, they retracted their visors and grinned. “Good work, Muneta people. Glad to see you have a strong sense of self-preservation. Tell your pilot to get back here.”

“They want you here, too,” Dean subvoc’ed, and Shanae sent back: _Crap. Affirm._

“Let’s see,” said the man on the left. He was subvocing and poking buttons on something strapped to his chest with the hand that wasn’t holding the flashgun. Then he smiled. “I’m in.” Dean’s lenses echoed: _I’m in._ “ _Starlane_ , cargo report.”

“Stay right there,” said the man on the right, as his partner’s gaze glassed over into the look that meant he was scrolling through the shipnet info. “Don’t panic. We’ll be taking over your shuttle.” 

“Why?” asked Dean, and Marika elbowed him in the side.

“You have any idea what those eggs you’re toting are worth?”

“A lot?”

“A lot,” confirmed the man. “Ah, this must be the pilot.”

Dean turned to see Shanae approaching down the corridor, a grim expression on her face. And then she stopped abruptly, her mouth an O of surprise, as a loud thunk sounded from somewhere behind Dean, and a scream ripped through the small space. Dean turned back to see the man on the right covered in a black, viscous fluid, clawing at his face and howling at the top of his lungs. The man on the left was laid out cold on the floor, next to the oversized socket wrench from the cargo hold.

And between the two of them was Pico, who had two tentacles wrapped around each of the flashguns, and both of them trained on the pirates.

Marika was thinking faster than he was. She lunged forward, grabbed the big wrench, and whacked the screaming man on the head. The noise abruptly cut off as he crumpled. “Yeah, I think our sense of self-preservation’s a bit stronger than _that_.”

Shanae was eyeing Pico with interest. “That the stowaway you told me about?”

“Yeah,” said Marika. “Thanks, Pico.”

The octopus waved one of his non-flashgun-holding arms as though to say _Don’t mention it._

“Okay,” said Shanae. “Dean, get into your vac suit and help me drag these guys back into their podship. We’ll eject them off the airlock and burst Muneta again to let them know everything’s okay.”

“What if they shoot us again?” asked Dean doubtfully.

“I can disable their cannon, no troub.”

As Dean and Shanae got suited up, Marika squatted in front of Pico. “I’m impressed. You really got some force behind that wrench. Uh, you want to hand over those flashguns now?”

* * *

The message came across all of their lenses at once as they sat in the galley eating curried chicken and rice noodles. 

_Burst from Muneta Station to Muneta Starlane. Display?_

They were still twelve hours out, kind of early for docking instructions, but Dean gave his ack and saw the other two were doing the same. The message scrolled slowly across his lenses: _Based on your info, discovered colony of ultra octos on station but they are evading capture. Explains product losses. Hold specimen for return to lab for testing._

Marika found her voice first. “What? No!”

“You told them about Pico?” Dean asked Shanae. 

She shrugged. “Had to. Muneta asked for a report on how we got away from the pirates.”

“You could have _lied_ ,” said Marika fiercely. “We are not giving up Pico to be... _dissected._ ”

Dean nodded. “He saved us. So we need to save him. You’re going on duty, right? You can just decline to dissect him.”

“The message said _return_. Which makes sense, they’ve got a bigger lab earthside, but it means he’d be going back with Ahmad, and he’s never met a creature he didn’t want to take apart.” She made a face. “Including me.”

“So what do you want us to do?” demanded Shanae. “Refuse to comply? Lose our jobs? They’ll meet us back at Muneta Earthport with handcuffs. And the octopus will have a hard time escaping that.”

Dean started to giggle, and Marika glared at him. “This isn’t funny. Pico’s our friend.”

“Sorry, I was just imagining eight tiny handcuffs.” Really, if they did get nabbed on touchdown, between his camouflage abilities, his ink, and the impressive speed with which he could cover both water and ground, Pico probably had the best chance of all of them to evade the law. 

“We still have the flashguns,” Marika said.

“Yeah, _those_ will be just great against body armor and lasertasers.”

“We should ask him,” Dean said suddenly, and the others looked at him as though he had two heads. “No, I mean, the fact that he grabbed the wrench, came up, and, I don’t know, snuck across the freaking _ceiling_ to rescue us? He’s got smarts.”

“He’s an _octopus_ ,” said Shanae.

“An extra extra augmented octo,” Marika corrected her. “Dean’s right. Besides, Pico has a right to a voice in his fate.”

“Great,” muttered Shanae. “We’ll just steal the shuttle and become pirates, led by an eight-armed mastermind who lives in a tank.”

“That would make an awesome vid series,” said Dean, as he led them down the ladder to the hold.

Pico swam toward the front of the tank as soon as they entered. Marika had left the voice sim hanging there, and as they approached he tapped the keys. **hello hello**

“Hey, buddy,” said Marika. “We’ve got a problem.”

* * *

Shanae brought the _Muneta Starlane_ to a smooth stop at the station’s dock. The clicks and bangs as the cargo hold’s exterior door mated to the station reverberated through the hold. _Ready when you are_.

“Give me a moment,” Dean subvoc’ed to the shipnet. He’d disconnected the tanks from ship power on the approach, but the frames and cradles that held them safely in the hold couldn’t be released until the ship was no longer moving. Marika came in to get her cases out from where they were stashed. They exchanged nervous glances as the cargo door opened.

Ahmad was waiting with his own gear, along with two techs and Wayne, the station’s chief mechanic and the only person who lived full-time on-station. “Welcome to Muneta Station, etcetera etcetera,” said Ahmad. He peered past Dean toward where the tanks sat. “Can I see the augmented octopus?”

“In a bit,” said Marika. “We need to get the eggs transferred before they run out of oxy.”

“Yeah, I know, but I was hoping.” He frowned at the tanks. “Wait, it’s not in there, is it? I’m supposed to bring it back.”

“It’s secured in the galley.” From her tone, Dean could tell it pained her to call Pico it. “Can we go to the office first and go over the transfer notes?”

“You can just get them from the station net.”

“I know, but I want to hear your take on things.” When Ahmad continued to look dubious, she added, “And I need to brief you on – on the octo,” which made him brighten considerably, and lead her out the door. Which meant it was time for Dean to put their plan into motion.

Wayne and the techs wheeled in the loading dollies, and Dean helped them move the first tank onto one of the dollies and fasten it down. In the low grav of the station it was a physically easy task, though an awkward one as each dolly was sized to hold just one of the large tanks, and two people were needed to maneuver the awkward load out of the hold and through the station. 

“I’ll help you with that,” Dean said to the two techs who had gotten the first tank ready to go.

“We got it,” said one.

“Nah, I’m sick of being on this tub, I want to stretch my legs.”

The two techs looked at each other, frowning, and then Wayne called out, “It’s okay, Lise, you can give us a hand getting the next tank ready,” and Dean grinned, slung his toolbag over his shoulder, and took her place.

Dean had been on Muneta Station plenty of times, but he’d never helped to dolly the tanks down, and it took all his attention to ensure that he didn’t run into a wall or let the dolly accelerate too fast. The tech shot him dirty looks every so often, probably for messing with his routine, but they made it to the hatching tanks without too many close calls.

“Love this view,” said Dean. 

“I guess,” said the tech. “I’m kind of sick of it.”

“I mean, just getting off the shuttle, it’s cool to see an ocean. Even a mini-ocean.” And it was cool, he thought: the hatching tanks were set up with plasteel mesh separating them from the artificial ocean, so that what Muneta’s ad-lit called the “Sustainable Ocean Simulator” oxygenated the water without the need for circulator pumps. When the eggs hatched, they’d be released into the fake ocean to feed on the prey fish that populated it for that purpose. 

He took off his toolbag and placed it on top of one of the hatching tanks. “So, let’s get these guys unloaded.”

They were nearly finished by the time Wayne and another tech got there with the next tank. “All right,” said the tech. “Let’s get this tank to the cleanout, and then pick up the tank of fish you’re taking back.”

“Lead the way,” said Dean.

The tech started toward the front of the dolly, then stopped. “Don’t forget your tools.”

“Oh, right, thanks.” He hefted his toolbag. He was pretty sure it was lighter than it had been.

* * *

“What do you mean, you lost the octo?” Ahmad’s voice was loud enough that Dean heard it from halfway down the corridor.

“Sorry!” said Marika. She didn’t sound particularly sorry. “I guess he escaped! They’re good at that, you know.”

Dean and the tech rolled the dolly into the _Starlane’s_ cargo hold as Marika and Ahmad came down the ladder from the galley. Ahmad was still fuming, complaining about irresponsibility and the importance of understanding what they were up against.

“What you’re up against?” asked Dean as he put down his toolbag. He tried to glance surreptitiously into the half-open top, but it was too dark inside to see anything. “Do your octopuses have flashguns, too?”

“Don’t worry, we secured the flashguns,” Marika reassured Ahmad. He did not look reassured. He looked, thought Dean, like his head was going to explode.

“As I told Marika, we detected at least two octopuses hiding in the SOS,” said Ahmad. He pronounced each letter: Ess Oh Ess. “We saw them on camera, but when Lise went diving she couldn’t find any.”

“They actually sound just as resourceful as – as ours was,” Marika told Dean. “They’d detached the corner of one of the hatching tank screens and moved a rock from the habitat floor to hold it in place. Ahmad only noticed it when the fish hatched and there weren’t as many as there should have been.”

“ _And_ the octos have been eating the product after hatching!”

“They like shrimp,” said Dean. Ahmad glared at him. “Just saying. You could give them shrimp instead.”

“Anyway, they’re my problem now,” said Marika cheerfully. “Unless you find the octopus on the shuttle after you take off.”

“In which case, we’ll just feed it shrimp,” said Dean, and he went to the back of the hold to help the tech unload the tank of CoolChroma™ and secure it in its cradle.

* * *

_Burst from Muneta Station to Muneta Earthport, cc Muneta Starlane. Display?_

The Head of Aquatic Biogenetics subvoc’ed his ack to the corpnet and watched the words scroll across his lenses.

_This is Marika Jeppeson, Biospecialist III, on behalf of the five resident augmented octopuses of Muneta Station who have authorized me to speak for them. These octopuses claim rights to self-determination under UN resolution 1514._

“Oh, shit,” muttered the Head of Aquatic Biogenetics. But he kept reading.

_The octopuses of Muneta Station promise not to consume any engineered eggs or fish if they are provided with a sustainable supply of shrimp, crabs, or other small crustaceans. In exchange they are prepared to do underwater maintenance work as well as surface tasks that can be performed in under two hours while wearing a permex wetsuit._

The Head of Aquatic Biogenetics blinked the message away and considered his options. But really, it was a no-brainer. He could see the ad-lit now: Muneta Fishclones! The Only Bio-Engineered Fish Raised By Space Octopi! Their competitors would shit themselves. 

And after all, when you added together the base salary, the off-planet bonus, and the mandatory overtime multiplier they were paying the techs – well, that would buy a _lot_ of shrimp.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Yhlee for beta-reading.
> 
> There really is a [UN Resolution 1514](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_on_the_Granting_of_Independence_to_Colonial_Countries_and_Peoples), on the rights of colonized peoples to their own independence. I suppose one could argue on the definition of 'peoples', but come on, Pico's totally a person.


End file.
